The type of belt in question can be integrated with an absorbent garment worn to assist in the collection of bodily discharges, particularly for persons suffering from incontinence, or the belt can be a separate belt to which an absorbent garment portion is attached by some means of releasable attachment such as hook and loop (also called touch and close) type fastening means, for instance such as sold under the trademark "VELCRO".
The belt of the separate type can be either a disposable belt, for limited use with a small number of absorbent chassis garments and thus requiring no particular cleaning, or a more permanent type which may be washed many times before its effectiveness or appearance warrants a change to a new belt.
Absorbent garments of the above mentioned type are well known in the art.
WO-A-91/08725 discloses an example of both these types in conjunction with an absorbent garment.
One of the problems recognized with such belts is achieving maximum comfort for the user by correct fitting, since incorrect fitting will result in sore, cut and/or painful areas for the user.
One area where it has been found desirable to increase comfort is the area of the belt attachment to itself. When one examines WO-A-91/08725 for example, it is clear that the attachment of the hook element strip and the loop element strip together for fastening the belt can easily result in one of the edges of the hook strip projecting beyond the zone to which it is intended to be attached and, as a result, contacting the body. This contact with the body is particularly uncomfortable.
Where the problem of incontinence is involved, it will be appreciated that persons suffering from this problem are often old and have physical handicaps of various types. As a consequence, they often require the assistance of personnel for fitting the belts or garments with integrated belts. If they, or the assistant personnel do not fasten the belt with great care, the hook element strips can easily be left in a position which makes them contact the body. This factor is particularly important for the case where the users are unable to assist themselves or otherwise unable to communicate the poor fitment to the assistant personnel.
It is also known from GB-A-2 232 337 to use longitudinal strips for belt fastening, whereby the strip is placed lengthways along the length of the belt portion. In this way, the risk of the hook element strip contacting the body above or below the longitudinal edges of the belt portion is reduced. The extent of the strip in the longitudinal direction of the belt portion is consequently considerable in order to be able to achieve adequate shear strength of the releasable fastener. This brings with it however the disadvantage that the strips may not properly overlap and will thus contact the wearer's body although at a different location. Such is of particular importance where the belt is slightly too small for example.
Arrangement of the elongate strip of hook elements along the width of the belt is known per se from FR-A-2 586 558, where a small margin between the edges of the strip and the outer edges of the belt is left. However, the size of such margin was not of importance to the inventors thereof and was thus nowhere considered.